During this week the two teams have been cleaning beaches but also collecting pieces of driftwood that had also been washed up. With this driftwood (and some plastic bottles from the beach clean) we have been building rafts in preparation for today's race from Little Cayman to Owen Island.
We started this morning testing and finishing our rafts, making sure that they actually worked. We then loaded them onto the back of the trucks and made our way to our departure beach opposite Owen island. Emily waved the team flags and we all set off, some not as good as others. Team 1 used very few items to build their raft which lucky for them made it a lot lighter. Team 2 however decided to make theirs much more buoyant which ended up making it extremely heavy and required a barrel to be removed at about halfway across the stretch of water. This allowed Team 1 to gain a very decent head start which they maintained for the entire race, allowing them to win by a significant distance. Team 2 on the other hand decided to forget the competitive element eventually and sang songs for 20 minutes as they gently pushed the raft to shore. During the race we were supported by Miriam, Maisy, Dr Watson and Mr Hopkirk in their kayaks and Mr Merrick, Giac and Emily in the support boat. Once the race had finished we enjoyed a well earned lunch on the boat followed by an hour and a half of relaxation and the fun of jumping off the boat next to Owen Island.
As it's our final day on Little Cayman we then, sadly, had to come back and pack up our belongings, hand in all the diving equipment, and tidy and clean up our very sandy rooms (we have actually become accustomed to sand in our beds!).
We were then just eating our meal (the last supper) and discussing how many life-long memories had been created during the week when Maisy appeared with something very wriggly inside a bag. Maisy works for the Department for the Environment and as part of this job she tags new turtle nests and then also checks nests that are ready to hatch regularly. She had just visited one of these nests and had found hatchling turtles that were struggling to make it to the sea. As with all freshly hatched nests she then needed to excavate the nest to release any turtles that were still struggling to make it out of the nests. So, once we had eaten and washed and dried up, we all jumped into the minibuses to find the site of the nest. We could not use normal torches or any flash photography as it confuses the turtles when they are trying to swim towards the moon, so we used infra-red torches and Maisy showed us how she excavates the nest. We counted 98 hatched turtle shells, we also found one unfertilised turtle egg (so we saw the yoke) and then one unhatched turtle that was dead and deformed - it had 2 heads - and we were able to see where the yoke is attached to the turtle on the underneath of it's shell (you can see this in the photo of the turtle on its back below).
Once Maisy had excavated the nest we took the 11 turtles that we had found to release them towards the sea. We set them off at the top of the beach and they paddled fast with their flippers eventually making it to the sea. The week has gone from being excellent to really quite unbelievable as we are now just trying to take in what we have just witnessed..........
Written by Eve and Sarah-Jane
Comments